


Peace When You Are Done

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x19 Fix-It, 15x20 Fix-It, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Parent John Winchester, Because fuck canon, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Canon-typical lack of coherency, Castiel/Dean Winchester First Kiss, Dean Winchester Uses Actual Words, Episode Fix-It: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, Fix-It, I know it's probably out of character for him to be this open, I know this makes no sense but I just think the finale should have been less underwhelming, John Winchester meets my narrative fist, M/M, and fuck that finale in particular, and we don't stand for abuser apology in this household so fuck him, basically what should have happened after despair, but goddamnit cas deserves a confession speech too, but like, dean's death physically sickened me, its a fifteen year long horror epic you're ALLOWED to be over the top, its not really him don't worry, no I did not spell-check this, who tf cares about canon now the writers sure don't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:33:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28594038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: ok so dean goes to the empty idk how maybe jack maybe his own wacky bisexual ways whatever he gets there before the final battle with chuck (which should have been way more dramatic lemme tell you)
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 26





	Peace When You Are Done

Dean opened his eyes again. The void. The empty. The nothingness at the end of time. He sighed. Billie had promised him, a long time ago, that this would be his final resting place. Dean began to walk. There was a faint disturbance to the place - distant whispers on the non-existent air, little flashes of colour on the edges of his vision.  
Then someone appeared to him, and Dean froze. John Winchester.  
Dean turned away. ‘Oh man, I’m … so not here for you,’  
John appeared in front of him. He had a smile on his face that sent chills through Dean’s heart. His father had never smiled like that.  
‘Hey, kid,’  
Wrong. This was all wrong.  
‘You’re not my father,’  
“John” smiled uncertainly. ‘Who else would I be?’  
‘Ok, listen, you son of a bitch,’ Dean said, rounding on him. It was the Empty, he decided. It was the empty manifesting as his worst fear. ‘Hopefully I’m never gonna have to see your ugly face again, so take this as my last words to you, gotcha?’  
‘Um …,’  
‘Your approval means nothing to me, alright? So go screw yourself,’  
“John” dropped its pretence. It was no longer his father, but Dean’s addled mind still recognised it as vaguely humanoid. He figured he’d go mad otherwise.  
‘Look, kiddo. He’s locked deep. You should get out while you still can. Everyone else is,’  
‘Well, thanks for the tip, but I’m not leaving here without him, alright? I’ve done that before, and I don’t think there’ll be any do-overs if I screw this chance over. So go screw yourself,’  
“John” opened its mouth to protest, but Dean stormed away from it, refusing to look back. It didn’t reappear.  
Dean kept walking. He wasn’t moving at all, he knew that, but he could sense the dimension shifting around him. Little specks of light crawled at the edge of his vision, and the scent of burning was on his tongue. The empty was collapsing like a dying star. Sam had watched a documentary on supernovas when they were little. Dean remembered him talking about it nonstop - maybe the empty would implode like a black hole, dooming them all. He ignored it. He had a goal, he couldn’t afford to get distracted.  
It stood before him soon enough, clad in a trench coat, head hung, bleak and blank and so lifeless Dean wanted to turn and run, just to get the image out of his head.  
He shook his head.  
Not this time.  
He stepped as close as he could. He could see the imprint of broken, torn wings in the darkness around him, clotted with a tar-like substance, the oily rainbow shine of them still just barely visible in the darkness at the end of time. Trails of eyes clustered in the air, closed, blinded from the darkness. They’d seen him more clearly than anyone ever had, and clearer than anyone ever would.  
Tell him.  
Dean began to speak.  
‘You know, cas, the first time you talked to me - I mean the first time … you tried to speak to me in your real voice, because you though I was special. You shattered every window in the room. And I think that might just be the clearest we’ve ever communicated, you know?”  
Dean stepped a little closer.  
‘You told me you loved me. At the lake house, when you were dying. And there was no way I would ever be able to say it back … I just know I wouldn’t be able to get the words out. So … I did what I people do. I made you a mixtape. ‘Cause that’s what I was taught - that’s what people did when they liked each other. They make mixtapes and they stand outside of houses with boomboxes and they sing to each other and … I thought maybe you’d understand. I thought maybe we had a shot,’  
He could feel his voice breaking. He didn’t stop it.  
‘But then you died. And I’d never felt anything like what I did then. People always leave me, man. Someone leaves in the end, someone goes where the other can’t follow … that’s the oldest story in the book, right? But you showed me that maybe it didn’t have to be like that. Maybe we could re-write the story,’ he reached forward, and gripped the collar of Cas’s coat, as if to shake him back to life. Tears covered his face now, and his voice was barely a whisper. ‘Maybe … maybe you could stay with me. Please … stay. Come back. Don’t go where I can’t find you. Please, I need you to stay … I need you to stay with me … I need you to … I need you … I need you … I … I love you,”  
The empty began to rain sparks around them. Dean winced and looked at the void around him, clinging to Cas’s coat. He felt a pair of hands on his wrists. He looked back at Cas - his friend’s eyes were wide and focused, staring at him in amazement. There was a manic blue gleam to them - the only real illumination in this place. A light at sea. A lamp on a map table. LED lights on a lonely road. A hand reached down into the pits of hell, bringing salvation with it.  
They weren’t crying anymore. He took comfort in that - this could be the last time he looked into Cas’s eyes, at least they wouldn’t be crying this time.  
‘Hey … hey! It’s me, it’s Dean!’ He was grinning - if he had a body his face would be hurting from it.  
‘Dean … you can’t be here,’ his voice sounded unhinged, so gravelly that it bordered on radio static. He was barely holding himself together, but he was looking at him. Properly looking at him. He gestured to the space between them. ‘This … this can’t happen,’  
Sparks began to rain in the distance, the empty yawning open, burning up. Dean ignored it. He put a hand on Cas’s cheek.  
‘Good things do happen, Cas,’ he murmured.  
He pressed his lips against Cas’s. They were soft, and stubbly, and warm, despite the freezing darkness of this desolate place. Cas’s hand found Dean’s shoulder. Sparks and fire were frothing in the air now, blazing through the tar trapping Cas in place, burning through his wings. Cas’s hand tightened, and he looked Dean in the eye.  
‘Hold on to me,’ he whispered, in a voice older than Byzantium, and chills went down Dean’s spine.  
Cas’s eyes went wide, then were eviscerated in a terrifying rush of white-blue that burned itself into Dean’s memory. His wings blazed around him, for the last time, etched in gold, flaking away. The ground fell away, like the ocean, collapsing into furious waves, into molten rock. The air changed, the silence ended. Light rained down around them, but it didn’t feel freeing - it felt like being back in the harsh, glittering eye of an apathetic ruler. It didn’t matter. He had Cas in his arms.  
The ground struck the air from him, cold and hard. His sense of touch had returned full-force. He could feel straw, and heat on his face. Lights were flickering above them, raining gushes of sparks down onto him. They stopped after a few moments, buzzing and humming. He grinned at the feel of light on his face, at the musty smell of old wood. He sat up with a groan, suddenly registering the markings to his arms - red feathery imprints that were already fading, like chicken-scratch. He sighed, and looked around. Dark wooden beams loomed over him. Sticks of rebar struck out from the wall like fangs. They were in a barn.  
He glanced at Cas. He was lying flat on his back, clutching his shirt, staring in wonder at the ceiling.  
‘Hey … you good?’  
Cas sat up, his tie and shirt bundled in his fist. His eyes moved rapidly back and forth, then he got to his feet and looked down. Dean followed the line of his gaze, and his stomach twisted. A pair of ashen wings were scorched into the straw, leaving little embers gnawing at the dust. Cas swallowed.  
‘I’m human,’ he whispered, his voice so raw and hopeful that Dean almost didn’t recognise it. ‘You … you made me human,’  
‘Oh,’ Dean murmured, getting awkwardly to his feet. ‘Um … sorry?’  
’No … thank you. I … I feel better, this way,’ Cas let out a long sigh. Then he frowned. ‘Did … the empty collapse?’  
‘Dunno. Do reckon we’ll still end up there when we die?’  
‘I have no idea,’ he smiled a little. ‘That’s pretty human, right? Not knowing what happens next?’  
Dean chuckled. ‘… I guess we’re making it up as we go,’  
Cas gazed at him. Dean forced himself not to look away. He’d met Cas’s gaze hundreds of times before, when Cas was furious, when Cas was angry. Never when cas had looked at him with this kind of … adoration.  
It’s alright, he told himself. You deserve this. You deserve this.  
Cas hugged him, gently, and Dean closed his eyes.  
‘I’m sorry for the hurt I caused you,’  
Dean smiled. ‘Yeah, that goodbye really messed with me, man,’  
‘Sorry,’  
‘Ain’t no thing. You were never any good at goodbyes,’  
Cas laughed, and leaned back. Dean had never seen him smile so much - it was strange, on his face, and brought back unpleasant memories of the Leviathans, of Lucifer. He shook himself free of those memories.  
I’m going to learn what his real smile looks like, if it kills me, he decided to himself.  
Cas was staring at the handprint on his shoulder.  
Dean smiled, gesturing with his burned, frayed sleeves.  
‘I, uh … I guess you owe me a new jacket,’  
‘Oh … I’m sure I can make it up to you,’ Cas gave one of his exaggerated winks, and walked smugly toward the entrance to the barn. Dean grinned and followed. Cas opened the door easily - even without his eldritch super-strength, he was still a strong little guy.  
‘You know, as flirting goes, that wasn’t bad, but …,’ his words died on his tongue as he looked up at the sky. ‘Oh,’  
The sky was red, marked with rusty lines of storm clouds. The horizon was tinged with black, skeletal trees, and the ground seemed scorched and dry. Spinning orbs of wings, wheels and eyes were visible in the far distance, over the ghost town Dean had died in. Coronas of blinding light surrounded them - they looked like falling stars. Angels.  
The ground trembled lightly underfoot, making the barn walls clatter. The ground split nearby, and an inky jet fired up into the sky - a demon, drawn to the battle like a raven to a graveyard. The roads were empty. Everything was eerily quiet, but the kind of quiet like a taut bowstring, or a held breath. The calm before the storm.  
Cas’s face lost all of its mirth. ‘Do you think we can get through this?’  
‘Well. You’re human now, right?’ Dean replied. ‘If we get through this, then … we could grow old together,’  
‘Hmm. You’d never grow old to me,’ Cas murmured, and walked toward the Impala, which perched on the edge of the empty road, its black, battered chassis reflecting the harsh crimson sky. An old necklace portraying a screaming face hung from the rear-view mirror, glowing faintly.  
The cassette player inside clicked on, and an old song began to play as they drove toward the final page. 

**Author's Note:**

> also btw the reason dean goes to the empty when he dies is bc billie told him he would in season 11, I'm guessing that got reversed but the writers suck at their job and didn't mention it.  
> Anyways hope you enjoyed, I wish anyone who related to cas and dean and were majorly screwed over by the finale a nice evening on me.


End file.
